Projects live or die based on the talent that they attract - and a great story is a prime attraction. And you can build your story with great opportunities for others to contribute creatively. Leave room for others to come and play.

"To make art is to push the boundaries of your cultural moment, but in a way that is grounded in the kind of deeper truth that has a chance of connecting with members of your audience, even if it alienates others." - Stanley Kubrick⠀⠀This quote is by far one of the few litmus tests that I use on almost every project.

Another formulation of this idea is Raymond Loewy’s famous MAYA (most advanced yet acceptable) design approach.

Writing a great ending without having written the rest of the story is easy. Writing a great ending that is the natural and yet surprising culmination and synthesis of everything that has come before it - that's hard.⠀

The trick of a truly satisfying ending is that when it arrives it seems both surprising and inevitable.⠀

Here’s an example. If out of nowhere a character jumps on a hand-grenade at the end of your story and dies... it's a shock, but might not resolve the drama. If however, that character has been dreaming for his entire life about the moment of his death, knows it will somehow involve a hand grenade... and then when that critical moment arrives he recognizes it, and accepts his fate in order to protect a group of children from the explosion, and then dies secure in the knowledge that he had lived his entire life as an instrument of divine power.... that is a better ending.(Spoiler: see, A Prayer For Owen Meany)